


Inherited Memories

by Calicia (Merinnan)



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 08:05:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14304387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merinnan/pseuds/Calicia
Summary: Artist Nanpart Malor and his sister and brother-in-law Evaren and Valonnan Dukat take steps to ensure the survival of artworks and the skill of art itself when Cardassia is threatened by economic collapse. This leads to a legacy passed down the Dukat line.





	Inherited Memories

**Author's Note:**

> In this story, what I have termed the 'Cardassian Interregnum' is the period of time in Cardassia's past when the government collapsed amid economic chaos, and the military ended up taking control. I made a guess as to the date of this, based on the rough date the Star Trek Fact Files gave for when the Cardassian military began plundering Hebitian tombs.
> 
> And I don't care how unbelievable the science is - this is Star Trek.

*************************  
TERRAN YEAR 2114  
*************************

The brush moved gently, delicately, filling in the shadings that completed the picture. A small stroke here, a dab there, and the painter sat back, eyeing his work critically.

"It's beautiful, Nanpart," said the young woman sitting to one side of him. "I wish I was as good an artist as you."

Nanpart Malor, the most acclaimed young artist in Cardassia, turned his head slightly to smile at her. "And I wish I could be a brilliant scientist like you, Valonnan. Or an inspiring speaker, like your husband the politician, here." He gestured to the third person in the room, a youngish man seated on his other side.

Evaren Dukat smiled. "But you're not," he said, completing his brother-in-law's response to Valonnan's oft-stated wish. "You're an artist in paint and charcoal and paper."

"Precisely."

Evaren looked at the painting. "You are right, Valonnen," he murmured. "It truly is beautiful. You've outdone yourself this time, Nanpart." He sighed. "It's such a pity that nothing lasts forever -- not even your beautiful paintings."

"Oh, now that's a hint if I ever heard one. Alright, Evaren, what's bothering you now?" Nanpart asked. Valonnan leant in.

"Go on," she said. "Whenever I asked you just said you'd rather discuss it when we met up with Nanpart."

Evaren sighed again. "You don't mind me using you two as sounding boards?" he asked, his usual question before pouring out whatever political problem was on his mind.

"Of course not."

"Just tell us."

"The economy isn't as good as what is officially stated," Evaren began. "A total economic collapse is inevitable."

"What will that mean, exactly?" Valonnan asked.

"There's no way the government can recover from it in any reasonable length of time," Evaren told her, glancing at Nanpart to make sure he was listening. "The government will collapse soon afterward, leaving mob rule. After a period of time, a new power will certainly arise -- probably the military, since the new government will likely have to take charge by force, and have the resources and power to build Cardassia back up."

"How long?" Nanpart whispered, sounding as shocked as Valonnan looked.

Evaren swallowed. "Eighty years at most. Maybe as little as thirty."

Nanpart and Valonnan sat silently, digesting everything Evaren had said. Then:

"What's the use of painting pretty pictures?" Nanpart demanded savagely. Taking his paintbrush, he shoved it angrily into a paintpot. "They'll be destroyed anyway, may as well be by their painter." He flicked large globs of paint from the paintpot onto the picture.

"Nanpart!" Valonnan said in alarm, grabbing his arm. Evaren grabbed the paintbrush out of his hand.

"You've got at least thirty years yet," he said. "You can take some artwork and hide it. Seal it up so no-one can get in without knowing how."

"And who do we trust with that information, Dukat? Who won't be tempted to break into a treasure-trove of artwork if this, this Interregnum will be as bad as you imply? I won't, and I trust you and Valonnan wouldn't, but we'll be dead before the end of the Interregnum if we take your most optimistic timeframe, and we'll most likely be dead before the end of it in any other timeframe."

"Encrypt the information and leave it in a safe place..." Evaren suggested half-heartedly.

"It would most likely be discovered before we want it to be - if it's not destroyed."

Valonnan shifted on her chair. "Inherited memory," she said quietly.

"What?" Nanpart asked, turning from Evaren to face her.

"Inherited memory. If you trust us, surely you trust our children and grandchildren."

"Not necessarily. Who knows how they'll turn out."

"Inherited memory?" Evaren asked, staring at Valonnan incredulously. "Do you intend to grind us up and feed us to our children? That may work with sra worms, and even voles, but no-one's dared do it to Cardassians - or even any other sentient race."

"No," Valonnan replied, "that technique always has a chance of failure, and the memories are ingested, not inherited. I'm talking about truly inherited memories -- passed down through DNA and RNA."

Nanpart blinked. "Is that possible?"

"Theoretically, I think it is. I've been researching it for the potential it has to boost our technology. Just think, if our foremost scientists, philosophers, programmers and engineers could pass down their knowledge to their children, those children wouldn't have to spend forty years or so learning what their parents knew. They'd  
already know it, and could pick up research right where their parents left off."

"What gives you any idea this could work?" Evaren asked.

"DNA chips and memory transcription," Valonnan said promptly. "The Law Enforcement Bureau can copy the short-term memory of suspected criminals as evidence, and our smallest pieces of technology use DNA to store all their information. Why not copy long-term memory onto DNA to be passed through your family? It would require modification of not only the DNA carrier-strands, but also of RNA, so the information could be decoded into electrical impulses for the brain to read, but the early stages of research are promising."

"But how could we know that our children or grandchildren won't surrender to the temptation to plunder the artworks?" Nanpart asked, sounding more inclined to rescue his work than his previous intention of destroying it.

Valonnan sat thoughtfully for a minute as her husband and her brother looked at her expectantly.

"I could try keying the carrier-strands to recessive genes," she offered. "So that only a few descendants would ever inherit the memories. At this point, that's the best I can hope to come up with. Even then..." she shrugged.

"Try," Nanpart urged her.

"If you need any funding..." Evaren added. Valonnan smiled winsomely at him.

"Oh, I was never worried about funding, Evaren dear."

 

*************************  
TERRAN YEAR 2168  
*************************

"Director!" Nanpart Malor, now the Director of the Cardassian Institute of Art, paused. Gently cradling the jevonite figurine in his hands, he turned to face the assisstant who had stopped him.

"Yes?"

"Pardon me, sir, but why are you taking that figurine? And several other pieces of artwork, many of them your paintings and Hebitian art, have disappeared."

"I'm putting them in storage," Nanpart replied.

"Excuse me - but why?"

A dull explosion somewhere outside rocked both men, and faint screaming could be heard.

"That's why," Nanpart said, and continued through to the storage room. He waited there until he heard the assistant leave, then slipped out to find the hidden door near the staircase. Going into the corridor concealed there, he came to the forgotten bunker that he and Evaren had found two decades earlier, a bare year before Evaren's tragic shuttle accident. Pushing that memory away, he silently gave thanks to the Spirit Protectors that the fatal accident had happened after Valonnan  
had copied his memories to DNA and injected them into herself. The inheritors of his memories would not have to relive seeing the body that was pulled out of the twisted wreckage.

At the door, Ekal Dukat, Evaren and Valonnan's youngest son, took the figurine and carried it to one of the solid metal boxes that were secured in the bunker. Valonnan looked up from where she was carefully packing paintings away to smile tiredly.

"How much more?" she asked. "Because we don't have that much more room in here."

"There were other pieces I would have liked to store here," Nanpart said, then sighed. "I would have liked to store _all_ the pieces down here, but someone saw me bring the figurine down. I said I was putting it in storage, with the other pieces that he had pointed out were missing, and led him to believe I was storing them in one of the more public storage rooms. But, I daren't bring anything else here."

Valonnan nodded as she flipped the lid of the chest she was working on.

"Fine. We'll seal everything up then. Ekal?"

"Yes, mother?"

"Seal the boxes, please, while your uncle and I set up the explosives."

A bare hour later, the three stood facing the hidden door as the Institute's evacuation alarm blared in their ears.

"The others aren't allowed to know about this bunker, are they?" Ekal said suddenly.

"No," Valonnan replied. "Your brothers and sisters are in the military, and your father predicted that the military would eventually take control. Until they have Cardassia stabilised, they won't hesitate to plunder the bunker." She stopped as the sound of more explosions and screaming started up again. "Go, Ekal."

"Mother..."

Valonnan smiled, a little sadly now. "It's your responsibility to survive, and have children, and make sure they survive, my son. You may survive this Interregnum, and your children most likely will, but I won't - and I choose a quick death now over a slow death later."

"But..."

"GO, Ekal." Valonnan's voice was quietly urgent. "You have to go now."

"Uncle," Ekal appealed to the older man.

"Do what your mother tells you," Nanpart told him. "You have to live on."

"Please, Ekal."

The young man turned and ran from the cellar, trying to block his ears to the explosion that followed him.

 

*************************  
TERRAN YEAR 2243  
*************************

A young teenage girl stood in the shell of an old building, drawn inexorably to a hole leading to the building's cellar. In the darkness beneath her, she could hear voles scurrying around.

"Vomisa!" a voice called behind her. Her father came up and put his hand on her shoulder. "Daughter, what are you doing here?"

Vomisa Dukat looked around her at the walls, darkened from explosions during the Interregnum, and crumbling from disrepair.

"This was the Cardassian Institute of Art," she said dreamily.

Her father sighed. "Yes, but it's gone. The artwork has gone to support the army, which is a shame, I suppose. Before the Interregnum our art was supposed to be the most magnificent in the Galaxy."

"We can build it up again," Vomisa said. "We can be the best again."

"Yes, but we have other artists working on that," the elder Dukat said firmly. "Not you. No Dukat is an artist, we go into _needed_ careers - like science, or the military, or..."

"An architect," Vomisa said.

"I was going to say engineer, but an architect is a needed person," Dukat agreed.

"I'm going to be an architect."

"Are you now?" Dukat sounded pleased. "None of this silly nonsense about being an artist?"

"An architect," Vomisa replied firmly. "And I'm going to rebuild this Institute." She pointed to the cellar beneath her. "My first goal will be to completely rip out _all_ the below-ground rooms. I think I might find some interesting things there."

 

*************************  
TERRAN YEAR 2309  
*************************

"When will you be back?" Kaasi Dukat asked her husband.

He sighed. "I honestly don't know. Officially, we're there to help prevent an economic collapse, such as the one that caused the Interregnum. Unofficially, we intend to annex, which will likely cause a fight. That's the reason so many soldiers are on standby."

Six-year-old Enna wandered in and threw her arms around her father's waist.

"Where are you going, father?"

"I'm going to Bajor, darling girl," he replied.

"Will you bring me back some pictures? And Bajor paints?"

Dukat sighed. "I'll bring you a picture. But I think you'll soon be too big for paints."

"But I want to paint famous pictures that get hung in the art place when I'm big," Enna objected.

Dukat laughed. "That's not what you'll want when you're big, Enna. You'll want to be a scientist like your mother. That's the kind of job Dukats have." He patted the child on the head, and leaned over to kiss Kaasi.

"I won't be gone long," he assured her. "A year or two at most. They can't send me there forever." He picked up his bag and stepped out the door.

"Please bring me some paints," Enna whispered. "I want to paint."

 

*************************  
TERRAN YEAR 2361  
*************************

Eight-year-old Tora Ziyal climbed into her father's lap clutching a sheet of paper, interrupting his work.

"Ziyal," he said gently, "can't you see I'm working?"

"But I want you to look at my picture," Ziyal said. "Isn't it pretty?"

Dukat looked at the picture she held out in front of her, of lopsided flowers in a vase.

"That's very good, Ziyal," he told her, smiling.

"I'm always going to draw pictures," she announced. "For ever and ever. I'm going to be the best drawer ever!"

"Even better than Nanpart Malor?" Dukat asked her.

"Even better than him!" Ziyal paused. "Who is he?"

Dukat laughed. "Never mind, Ziyal. You'll learn when you're older, if you really want to be an artist."

"I do," she assured him.

 _"No Dukat is an artist."_ Dukat remembered his father telling his elder sister, Enna. _"You're too old for this nonsense about wanting to be one. Choose something sensible."_ The memory image of Legate Dukat turned to regard him. _"No Dukat is an artist,"_ he repeated.

 _"Ziyal's family name is Tora, not Dukat,"_ Dukat told him. _"She's half-Bajoran - she'd never be allowed into one of your sensible careers."_

"Father? Father!"

"Hmmm?" Dukat blinked. "Oh. Yes, Ziyal?"

"Do you think I'm going to be the best drawer ever?"

Dukat smiled at her. "Of course, Ziyal. If you want to be an artist, you go ahead and be the best artist ever."


End file.
